


just one thing

by youheldyourbreath



Category: The Queen's Gambit (TV)
Genre: F/M, Mentions of alcoholism, Post-Canon, domestic or as domestic as these two can manage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-15
Updated: 2021-03-15
Packaged: 2021-03-23 22:20:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30062379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/youheldyourbreath/pseuds/youheldyourbreath
Summary: There is a little boy with blonde hair that Beth Harmon loves more than chess. He has a sharp tongue and an even quicker chess game and reminds her achingly of his Daddy. Benjy Watts is her pride and joy and the only thing in her life better than chess.
Relationships: Beth Harmon/Benny Watts
Comments: 7
Kudos: 90





	just one thing

There is a little boy with blonde hair that Beth Harmon loves more than chess. He has a sharp tongue and an even quicker chess game and reminds her achingly of his Daddy. Benjy Watts is her pride and joy and the only thing in her life better than chess.

When he is born wriggling and red, she doesn’t know what to do with the little life dropped in her arms. The nurses coo and tell her how lucky she is and how sweet the screaming bundle is, but she has no attachment to the moment. It is like someone else is inhabiting her body and she is frozen in the absence of fear. 

Benny is wonderful from the start. He kisses his wife’s head, grateful for the little world that now fits in his arms, and brushes his long finger against his son’s cheek. “Hey Benjy-boy,” he whispers only loud enough for Beth to hear as their son screams the room down.

When they get home she is even more pitiful. She is tired and cranky and, gosh, a drink would be such a good antidote to the sleepless nights and never ending baby watch. She hates how tired she is and she hates the feeling that she is failing the little boy who didn’t choose to be brought earth side. That had been on her and Benny and the high of a tournament in Prague. 

And so, when Benjy is seven weeks old, Beth Harmon shuts down and relapses. She goes out one night with the intention to see Jolene and never makes it there. The red fluorescents of the bar on the outskirts of town pulls her inside like some half-forgotten siren song.

She comes home the next morning miserable and hungover and Benny falls at her feet. He kisses her stomach and clutches her body close as she sways above him like some unfeeling queen. “I can’t lose you, Beth,” he chokes. The dried mascara grates on her eyes. 

It is for Benny and only Benny that she tries to rally and wash off the stain of the night before. She loves chess more than Benny, but only barely. For him, she tries. Every damn day she tries. 

Six years of sobriety down the drain all because of motherhood. 

Clean and not-so-refreshed, she crosses to the bassinet of her baby. He isn’t crying and instead is looking up at her with his alien eyes. He is too small to have such a discerning look and, for the first time, Beth sees a shadow of herself in her son. It humbles her and terrifies her all in one heart-breaking moment. 

She wants more for him. 

Like Benny did for her, Beth falls to her knees at the edge of the bassinet and folds her son into her arms. She rocks back and forth as he fits seamlessly into her neck. Beth cries. And cries. And then cries some more.

Some time later Benny finds his wife and son curled up together on their bed sound asleep and for the first time in almost two months, he lets himself hope again.

Benjy becomes everything to Beth in a moment. The hospital had not given her that clarity and the months following his birth had been hard and grating on her sobriety, but when her son had peered up at her and she had looked back, really looked back, she knew she loved him.

She falls in love with her husband more, too, when her eyes are finally unclouded and she can see the father he has become over the last two months. He does silly things as a father. Benny pads around barefoot in their living room and rocks his son to country music, singing along softly. Sometimes to put him to sleep and other times just to be with him. He feeds their son his afternoon bottle while he plays a game of chess with himself, pushing the pieces in the clumsy way having both hands occupied can be. But mostly, he likes to look at their son. For hours. He sits on their porch, in the backyard, in their living room, every stitch of their home and admires Benjy. 

The most heart arresting thing he does with Benjy, though, is when he kisses his son goodnight whenever he puts him down. He softly lowers him into the bassinet and pushes the little tuft of blonde hair out of their son’s eyes. “I like your hair, kid,” he always says. 

The first night she is present enough to catch this ritual, when she is back in her body and trying again, she drags her husband to bed and fucks him until her cries wake the baby. 

It isn’t perfect, some days it is really fucking hard, but it gets easier as time goes on. And she doesn’t resent Benjy for how much less she practices chess now. It is still the first thing she ever let herself love. She makes her money playing tournaments and handing men their asses at the game she has near perfected. But she doesn’t obsess over it every moment. She is able to put up some boundaries when it comes to Benjy. 

And when he is two, she starts to share chess with him. 

He pushes the wood around uselessly like he watches his parents do and has no concept of the game, but it melts some final cold piece of Beth that she has clung to since her mother drove into the oncoming car and killed herself. 

When Benjy is three he starts to understand the rules. Barely but she sees sparks of understanding now and again. 

The chess world wants little Benjy Watts from the moment they learn about his existence. Miraculously, it takes them almost four years. 

When Beth was pregnant, she and Benny had gone to great lengths to keep it secret. She was so petrified of her pregnancy she could barely talk about it without burrowing down into panic, and when that feeling had finally passed at sixth months, they had been concealing it for so long it became a quiet game between the two of them to see how long it could stay a secret. 

Then, when he is born, Benny hates the idea of sharing Benjy with their world. Their son is theirs, he tells her fiercely when their son is nine months old and toddling to his first wobbly aided steps. So whenever they have to travel for work, Benjy stays home with Jolene or the twins or even Harry, if he has the time to babysit. It is perfect for a while. Until it isn’t. Until someone talks about little Benjy Watts.

Beth is so angry she could spit when she gets asked about Benjy out of the blue at a tournament. Benny is equally as mad when he finds her later in the lobby at some hotel in Colorado. 

“They know,” she says with wide eyes.

Benny frowns, “I know. One of our neighbors. Mrs. Calloway or something.”

Beth feels the pressure headache mount behind her eyes. Mrs. Calloway is ninety-seven years old. She knows in her heart the sweet old lady down the block wasn’t being malicious when she outed Benjy’s existence to the world. She had watched their son for a few date nights over the years. One of the blood sucking hounds from Life or Chess Review must have been poking around in Lexington. The ten year anniversary of Beth’s win again Borgov is on the horizon. She knows people have been more interested in her lately as it turns the corner. 

“You know her. The little old lady in the green house.”

“For fuck’s sake,” Benny curses loudly enough that a few chess onlookers turn. 

Beth guides her husband away from the crowd and pushes him into the elevator. As they ride up to their room, she realizes, “We have to tell them.”

Benny shakes his head. “Like hell.” 

“If we control the narrative then we control what happens next. I don’t want them coming to our house, Benny.” 

Something cracks in her husband’s face. “He’s just a little kid.” 

Together they decide to grant an interview to Chess Life. They have done a few over the years. Once when some rookie kid mentions in an interview that he saw Beth Harmon and Benny Watts kissing at Nationals and they are politely nudged to do a tell-all cover story. Another time is when Benny beats Borgov five years after Beth. The interview is at their house and Beth organically gets folded into the interview by a sweet-faced and earnest reporter who watched Beth play when she was twelve. The third time is when Beth is three months pregnant and they have just gotten married. Chess Life pesters both of their agents to interview the newlyweds until they finally acquiesce. It ends badly when the sexist reporter, a real 180 from their last joint interview, asks Benny what Beth is like in bed. 

This interview feels like none of those interviews. It is patched up at the last moment in Colorado before Beth and Benny leave. The interviewer wastes no time. 

“So you two have a son. Why keep that from your fans for so long?”

Beth coolly appraises the reporter and levels him with the stare that makes her opponents tremble and Benny salivate. “We didn’t really think our personal life was anyone’s business.”

“You granted an interview when you were freshly married.”

“We were bullied into an interview when we were first married. And when we first started dating, too, if memory serves,” Benny flatly replies.

The reporter has the decency to squirm in his seat. “So your son, Benjy, is he a Harmon or a Watts?”

Beth sees Benny’s eyes flash. “What kinda question—“

She sets her hand on his knee and answers for him. “His last name is Watts. But he’s a Harmon and a Watts. It takes two, after all.”

“And why conceal him? Why lie for so long?”

“We didn’t lie,” Beth says. “We kept it private. Our son’s privacy is important to us.”

“Besides,” Benny adds, slinging his arm over his wife. “It’s 1977. Whether or not Beth and I ever had kids didn’t really feel like anyone’s business.” 

The interviewer fails at an attempt at levity when he asks. “And so what do you two love more now? Chess or Benjy?”

She knows what Benny’s answer will be before he gives the swift reply of their son. But she doesn’t expect hers to come out just as quickly, as fiercely, when she says, “Benjy.” 

Beth Harmon loves only one thing more than chess. And when she gets home to her little boy after the tournament that outs him to the world and he barrels into his mother on chubby toddler legs, Beth hauls his blonde head close and kisses all over his face. 

“Mommy,” Benjy giggles.

Just one thing, Beth thinks. 


End file.
